When planting corn and other row crops it is essential to place the seeds in the ground with uniform spacing between the seeds to ensure an even growth and maximum crop yield. Most row crops are now planted individually and are not in hills as prior planting practice as learned from the Indians.
After hill planting the next improvement to improve yield was a seed selecting mechanism known as the plate type planter wherein a seed plate rotates beneath the supply of seed, the seeds drop into a recess of predetermined size in the plate relative to the seed to be planted. This seed was then carried by the plate to a slot hole for ejection by gravity. A separate plate was necessary for each seed size i.e., bean, corn, cotton etc., the seeds also had to be of uniform size requiring grading of the seeds.
With the advert single cross hybrids the problem of grading became extremely difficult due to the irregular size as compared to the regularity of double cross seeds.
The plateless planter invented by Keeton and disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,308,774 issued Mar. 4, 1967 operated on an entirely different principal from the plate planter. The seeds in the finger pick up meter are engaged by fingers and slid along a vertical circular plate until they are ejected through a hole in the plate.
This planting device was improved as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,607 wherein the seed engaging member was divided into a large and small seed engaging part also, an improved seed remover consisting of depressed areas or modulations including sloping surfaces was added just prior to the exit.
The vertical circular plate required a very flat surface in the area of circumference contacted by the fingers holding the seed. This portion of the plate was reinforced and machined for a flat surface was also necessarily wear resistant to the pressure of the seeds in the fingers.
This additional wear plate has been abandoned in favor of a stamped plate of hard metal. This stamped plate does not provide a flat uniform surface for transportive the seed by the fingers and the removing means or the depressed area is also not true. This metal vertical plate is also subject to change in surface flatness due to wear and the variations due to stamping.
The spacing of seeds within the row will be varied by the row width to be planted.
Before the advert of accurate meter calibration, a farmer would calibrate, as best as he could, the meter for row and seed spacing and speed of the planter to obtain maximum yield. However, this calibration has been found to be subject to accuracy with only one size shape of seeds. The requirement to use different seed size and shape occurs because of each farmers demand for more seed than can be furnished to him from one seed company in one size and shape. This farmer also may desire seed with certain genetics for different soils and these seeds then may be different sizes and shapes from the calibrated seeds.
The seed size and shapes vary and for accurate performance the release means is different for flats, rounds, large and small combinations of seeds. Thus by changing seeds and not recalibrating and not changing the release means, proper seed spacing will be forfeited.
Tests on current state of the art meter calibration devices such as the MeterMax.TM. can determine the speed modulation or depression release and tension of the fingers for maximum planting accuracy for each type of seed. The tension on the fingers and the modulation have not been variable in planters previously. This invention provides for variation in the depression or modulations of the seed release area without removing the meter from the planter and still maintaining a flat even wear resistant surface of the backing plate.
The exit slot has also been changed to avoid rejection of seeds back into the meter from the seed conveyor as determined by calibration of the meter. This improvement is provided by reducing the size of the exit slot and also changing the shape or contour of the exit slot.
For example, a grower may have three different seed sizes, total of 90 bags of corn seeds, he may have 30 bags of great big rounds, 30 bags of medium size flats and 30 bags of a real small diamond shape seed. This mix has occurred because there is only so much seed available in various sizes and he gets what is available from his supplier or by choice. Thus the grower will have set by calibration his planter with a metering device to have top performance in one size only with current finger planters. If you set your planter with a calibration device so that it is accurate for one seed with the normal backing plate, one-third of the seeds would be spaced accurately and two-thirds of the seeds would not be accurate as to spacing between the seeds. Thus two-thirds would not be getting the maximum yield potential because of skips and/or doubles. There are two different backing plates available in the stamped metal in the industry at the current time. The farmers is locked into that for the whole year because to change planting accuracy would have to change meters i.e., take the meter off and dissemble the components in order to change the backing plates. During the season it is an impossible task because of the time and expense required.
This would require taking apart the row units and putting in a new backing plate and then would not know where to set without going back to a meter adjustment station. Under current conditions it would take up to two days to get your unit changed for a different seed size with the current backing plates thus the farmer must accept less than optimum performance for two-thirds or some percentage of his seeds. This invention permits the finger pickup type planter to compete with vacuum planters where they merely stop and change the disk. This currently requires stopping and removing the planter and meter to change the insert to ensure maximum performance. This fine tuning of the specific seed style has only recently been possible because of the introduction of seed performance equipment. The current test stands let a technician adjust a finger pickup type meter for peak performance with one type seed. This invention, one may adjust for at least three or more specific type seed performance which may be changed as the seed is changed.
This provides a perfectly flat running surface for the finger to run on, no warping in the backing plate and the fingers will run with no variance of pressure and will then drop seed correctly into the outlet. In this case the modulations are changed but are not radically different in each case. However the modulations are different for each different type of seeds.
Since the introduction of test stands capable of monitoring the performance of the meters it has been possible to get detailed testing of the performance of the meters preseason. In this testing it was found that the outlet currently used is too large. This requires a change in the outlet form and size. This will prevent the ricocheting of seeds back for the transfer mechanism in the discharge outlet. This increased the number of skips from the meter by the fact that the outlet was not properly sized or shaped.
These and other objects advantages this invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art after consideration of the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which a preferred form of this invention is illustrated.